Sitora Yusufiy, briefly married to Omar Mateen, says she was shocked by shootings

By Alex Burness

Staff Writer

Posted:
06/12/2016 06:11:44 PM MDT

Updated:
06/13/2016 09:26:00 AM MDT

A "devastated" Sitora Yusufiy, ex-wife of Orlando mass shooting suspect Omar Mateen, said in an interview Sunday outside her Boulder County home that Mateen was "unstable," "bi-polar" and generally abusive toward her during their brief marriage.

Yusufiy and her fiancé, Marcio Dias, emerged from their home in the northwest foothills outside of Boulder to offer remarks on a day Yusufiy said is "going to take a while to process."

"I was woken up by my parents calling me saying, 'Sitora, wake up. Sitora, wake up,'" she said. "The first thing that they told me, 'Your ex-husband was involved in a mass shooting.'"

"More than anything, I was so, so deeply hurt and heartbroken for the families that lost their loved ones," she said. "To be in some way affiliated at one point in my life to someone who caused such a tragedy — it shook me."

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As rain fell and wind whipped outside the couple's foothills home, Yusufiy described her arranged and volatile marriage to Mateen, with whom she said she has not spoken in at least seven years.

The Washington Post reported she met Mateen through an online dating service and agreed to move to Florida to be with them. They were married in March 2009, and although she said it only lasted a few months, their divorce was not finalized until 2011.

"In the beginning, he was a normal being that cared about family, loved to joke, loved to have fun," she said.

Within a few months, though, she "saw his instability," which involved him getting angry for seemingly no reason, then physically abusing her "very often."

"I tried to see the good in him even then," she said, "but my family was very tuned into what I was going through and decided to visit me and rescue me out of the situation."

When they arrived in Fort Pierce, Fla., she added, they had to wrestle her out of Mateen's arms. She left with only a few belongings, and proceeded for about 18 months with the divorce from New Jersey, while Mateen remained in Florida.

During that period, her family members warned Mateen to stay away from her, and said they'd go to police if he was found trying to contact her.

Though Yusufiy said she observed an unpredictable temper and symptoms of bi-polarity in her ex-husband — she could not say whether he'd ever been diagnosed as being bi-polar — she said she'd never observed any indication that Mateen, who reportedly called 911 to pledge allegiance to the Islamic State prior to the club shooting, might be tied to or otherwise supportive of terrorist activity.

She described Mateen as "religious," which prompted her fiancé to chime in with, "that has nothing to do with it."

Sitora Yusufiy, the ex-wife of Orlando shooting suspect Omar Mateen, her fiance Marcio Dias give a statement to the media at their home outside Boulder on Sunday.
(Autumn Parry / Staff Photographer)

When asked if she could fathom a reason Mateen might have been motivated to open fire on so many people he did not know, Yusufiy said: "Emotional instability. Sickness. He was mentally unstable and mentally ill. That's the only explanation I could give."

Yusufiy said that she had been interviewed by the FBI on Sunday, and Deborah Sherman, an FBI spokeswoman in Denver, confirmed as much, but declined to elaborate on that aspect of the investigation.

There's no indication that the questioning was anything more than procedural, and at the time Yusufiy spoke with the media, there was no law enforcement presence near the home.

Yusufiy, a marketing and art director for Rainforest Awareness Worldwide in Boulder, said, "The work that I do, that me and my fiancé do in the world, is we bring people together, we open them up to harmony of religion, of race, of homosexuality, of orientation — whatever it may be. Acceptance of humanity, of each other, to live in harmony with our Earth.

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